Story Published: Sep 18, 2009 at 5:39 PM PDT
EUGENE, Ore. -- The 140 staples and 60 stitches in her flesh tell the story of a brutal attack.
"The dog had my arm and was just shaking it and tearing it up," Angel said. "I remember hearing the tearing of my pants."
She and her husband Ken asked KVAL News not to fully identify them. To be fair, we have not identified the owner of the dog but did attempt to talk to her.
Ken and Angel had gone to the home of a friend in Marcola who they knew had pit bulls. Once they parked, they heard the friend yell, "Just a minute."
"In my mind thought she was putting the dogs away," Angel said.
But the dogs weren't put away. Once inside the porch, Angel fell to the ground as her heel was torn to shreds and her husband tried to get the dog off her.
"Everything I could do," Ken said, "pound it, hit it, bend its tail, hit its snout."
"It just grabbed my ankle and started tearing it up," she said.
After breaking a chair over the dog's back, it released her -- but then went for her face.
"I thought to myself, they are never going to get this dog off me," she said, "and I am going to die."
Ken made a drastic decision and asked the owner for a gun. He shot the dog.
"There was blood everywhere," Angel said.
"She had such horrendous wounds her arm didn't even look like an arm," Ken said.
KVAL News tried to talk to the owner of the dog.
"I don't want to talk to you," she said before slamming the door, "and there is a 'No Trespassing' sign."
Monica Smith from American Family Insurance said incidents like this happen a lot -- and that's why they don't cover dogs deemed "aggressive."
"We see claims all the time for dog bites," she said. "We exclude those breeds because they make up a huge percent for payouts of dog bites."
As for Angel and Ken, they wanted to be clear that pit bulls are not the problem.
"That breed is not the problem," she said. "It's the owners."